Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Agenda 21 -- Katy, bar the door!

By John Ballard

Thanks to an array of different contacts my wife and I are treated to the latest in viral emails, some of which are still swirling around the inter-tubes headed for another decade, but many of which are contemporary. I find it is a good way to keep my finger on the pulse of a certain segment of the population, sincere and often otherwise smart people with the best of intentions, who live in a tight little cocoon with very small windows.

Sometimes I try to engage them in an email exchange, but I've found it best not to disturb them too much. We all know people like these, really sweet, sincere folks who would never do anything deliberately mean or ugly, but who live their lives under dark conspiracy clouds which alternately test, then prove, their faith. But I digress...

The latest of conspiracy theories is Agenda 21. And it is so ubiquitous that all one has to do is mention the term and those in the know will understand exactly what you mean. I didn't, of course, not being part of the anointed but I soon found out. For many believers this is simply further evidence of warnings from the Lord Himself (P.B.U.H.). All you need to do is a web search or check the hashtag #Agenda21 and you will have access to an avalanche of information about the latest sinister plot of diabolical forces to take over the world and make everybody slaves in a New World Order.

Agenda 21 is right now an important issue that is being passionately debated in many state legislatures around the country, but it's mostly been ignored by our national leaders and the press. It is being ignored because it is an insane conspiracy theory. According to the United Nations, Agenda 21 refers to a "comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment." It came about from the signing of a non-binding resolution in 1992 called "Rio Declaration on Environment and Development." It makes your standard calls for sustainable growth -- energy conservation and all that. "Principle 1: Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature."

But to some conservatives, all that do-gooder speak is actually just a cover for something much more sinister: the creation of a new one world government. As this pamphlet puts it [PDF], "Sustainable Development documents call for the abolishment of private property and the freedom that private property supports. If individual members of our society do nothing, the continuing loss of liberty will result in increasing social confusion and discord, rising resource shortages, financial decay and a dimming future for us and our posterity.The looming battle of ideas should be recognized as a classic - and perhaps ultimate - battle between Liberty and Tyranny."

f you follow the Agenda 21 conspiracy (which can also be known as "Sustainable Development"), 20 years ago, these guys got together in Rio and put into motion a nefarious plot to enact centralized rule across the planet, quashing individual liberty, and outlawing self-rule. If it doesn't sound terrifying, it does at least sound complicated. And that's where this bizarre conspiracy theory gets truly bizarre. See, this confederacy of ruthless world leaders are not taking over the world by internationalizing finance or communications. No, you have to look much, much closer to home. See, the path to tyranny appears to run through banal local legislation. Here are just a few of examples of Agenda 21 that freedom lovers are fighting.

In Georgia, some state lawmakers see Agenda 21 in a 1-cent state sales tax to fund build a new highway and bike lanes in metro Atlanta. "That's Agenda 21 101," said former Cobb County commission chairman Bill Bryne in an interview with Atlantic Journal-Constitution writer Jim Galloway. [sic - I guess the writers at the Atlantic don't know there is a place called Atlanta] How can he tell? Well, take a closer look at those bike lanes. "Bicycles and pedestrian traffic as an alternative form of transportation to the automobile. That's Agenda 21."

In North Carolina, congressional candidates want to defund a planning commission in the western part of the state because of its alleged ties to sustainability. The mayor of Charlotte, who's running for governor, tweeted his support for a resolution against Agenda 21 earlier this month, despite promoting "smart growth" in 2004. The Local Food Advisory Council has the word "sustainable" in its mission, and this week a Republican congressman is trying to have it removed so it won't "lull the public into complacency."

The Alabama state legislature unanimously passed a bill last month forbidding any policy "originating in or traceable to Agenda 21."

Last week in Tennessee, residents of Sevier County accused a group called Our Smokies, Our Future, which appears to be an activist group for standard liberal stuff like better water quality and more affordable housing, of being an agent of Agenda 21.

In Arizona in April, Republican legislators sponsored a bill that would spike any environmental initiative funded by the government, like a $25 million project to increase energy efficiency in Phoenix.

A sharp-eyed reader of theNapa Valley Register noticed the hand of Agenda 21 in a Napa Valley city council plan to build several thousand housing units along Soscal Gateway June 9. "For those who think that their city council and Napa County supervisors control Napa's manifest destiny, think again," wrote Mark Gasster. "The extremely high-density housing required by ABAG is the direct result of the United Nations Agenda 21."

There's more. Plenty more. You will notice a reference or two to California, but down heah in the South we have a lock on the best examples. But you get the idea. Go to the link and watch a video about how these evil people are conspiring to poison us all with fluoride and aspartame.

Many of us on the Left find this stuff amusing. But I have a strong hunch that what we are witnessing is a coordinated, deliberate and well-funded agenda of what Hillary Clinton called a "vast Right-wing conspiracy." It's more serious than we like to believe.

Yes, I know. Our conspiracy theories are real and theirs are not. But there are a lot of vulnerable people just waiting for someone to splain to them how this colored man ever got to be president, especially without a birth certificate. And why he just pretends to be a Christian when actually he hates us and wants to make us all slaves. And if we don't move quickly all these brown people from other countries, making anchor babies and using up all our tax money, are gonna put him in office for a second term.